roblathan.com

Last night, I had one of those rare tough-decision, movie-moments. You know those moments in the movies where some cowboy is faced with the grim prospect of either shooting his beloved horse, named Red, or allowing the horse to live a little while longer as it struggles through the awful pain of having a gimp leg. Every single time, the cowboy shoots the horse. Sad music plays. And everybody weeps.

But since I’m not a cowboy, just a plain old city folk, my horse was actually a mouse. For the past few days, this mouse had been our third roommate. At first it seemed okay to have him around. (Well at least for me. Niki wanted him out from the get-go.) It would be a little jarring to be sitting on the couch watching TV, and suddenly see a little creature dash across the floor. But after doing my best to block out what I just saw, I would return to my program. And I wouldn’t see the mouse for a while.

But then the mouse started getting cocky. He’d run across the bedroom floor, stop in the middle, do a little jig, and then run back into his hole, all while Niki screamed like a little school girl and I yelled out, “Come back here you little bastard!” Not only was he getting free rent, but he was taunting us about it. Bottomline: mousie had to go.

And so I went to the nearest Duane Reade and got one of those glue trap doo-hickeys. I placed 4 of them all around our apartment. Whoever made those things was a genius, albeit a very cruel genuis. Within an hour of putting the glue trap down, we had a hit. As I was watching Entourage, I heard a slight rustling around. I looked back and on the kitchen floor was one of the most gruesome sights I’ve ever seen. The mouse was stuck in the glue trap and was struggling with all its might to get out. Niki screamed again. I looked on dumbly.

After a while I gathered up enough courage to scoop up the glue trap with squirmy mouse, took it outside, and placed it on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building. I tried freeing the mouse by placing a stick under it but the glue was too powerful. I watched on as the mouse continued to struggle to free itself. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was stuck there. Forever. And so I realized I had to do that same horrific deed as those cowboys. I had to kill Red.

I didn’t have a six shooter on hand, so I looked around the street for a potential weapon and found it: a brick. Holding the brick over the defenseless mouse I was waiting for some booming voice to say, “No Rob! Don’t do it! I was just testing you!” But the voice never came. So I took a deep breath, looked to the side, and began pounding the brick down. After way too many repetitions of this, I finally stopped. Mousie was dead. No sad music played. And nobody weeped. Though a few people walking by did give me odd looks. I tipped my hat to them, made a proper burial for Red, and walked off into the sunset. Or actually back inside to finish the rest of Entourage.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.